The little sucker!

Picture this: It's early Sunday morning and everyone in the apartment is pretty tired. Caroline goes to the bathroom and leaves little Jack with me. I put him on my chest to help him STAY asleep and the next thing I know I hear this little noise and feel him kissing my chest. My collarbone to be exact. And to be more exact, he wasn't kissing me either.....ya gotta love this kid.---Mike

Jack-ups

OK...couldn't wait...Today Jack had a very new experience with hiccups, or as I call them, Jack-ups...because, well, he's Jack. Actually, it's a new experience for me as well. I've never seen so cute a kid with such a cute reaction to the hiccups. I know, I know...everything he does , I'm going to think is cute....he's an infant and my son---yadda yadda yadda. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful gift.---Mike

Jack's first televised performance

Here's a video of Jack about an hour after being born. I'll let the video do the talking. I'll post a few more videos tomorrow....this one took all day to upload. So far we are all doing well. Caroline and Jack are asleep. They both really are very cute when they sleep!--Mike

John Daniel (Jack) Fleischer Arrives

It all started at 4:30 PM on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008. Earlier in the day I had just washed everything that needed to hang on the clothes line (including the car seat cover) and had gotten most of it in from outside. I had also earlier in the day got dinner ready for some friends (Kyle and Melodee) that were going to come over and cut Mike's hair. I was tired from all the stuff that I had done during the day so I laid down on the couch at about 4:00 PM to take a nap. When I woke up I laid there for a minute or so and then all of a sudden I felt the baby moving his arms and then I felt a "POP" and then a gush of water! Even though I had never had my water break, I knew for certain that had to be it. We called the director of the school (Gene Smith) and asked if he would drive us to the hospital. After running a red light and passing by other drivers in 5:00 PM traffic, we got to the hospital at about 5:15 PM. They rushed me to the delivery room since I tried to time my contractions and they were getting closer and closer together (first about 5 minutes at the top of the mountain, then 3 minutes by the time we got to the bottom of the mountain.) When I got there I was already 9 cm dilated...within a couple of minutes I was 10 cm dilated. I was not the most cooperative patient. He wanted me to push, but I was not ready. When I was finally ready I pushed and prayed that the Lord would give me strength. There is no way that I could have pushed little Jack out on my own without the Lord's help. John Daniel Fleischer (which we actually call Jack) was born at 6:19 PM on March 12th, 2008. He weighed 6 pounds 10 ounces (3 kilograms) and was 20 inches (49 centimeters) long. I am just amazed how life is such a miracle. We are so blessed and cannot describe how happy we are and how much we love him. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. We thank God for out little, wonderful blessing!
Caroline

Honduras Baby Shower

On Wednesday, February 27, 2008, I had yet another baby shower. This shower included our church and teachers from the school. Mike has always wondered who would make my baby shower cake since I have made so many. There is this great lady (Robin Parsons) who made the baby shower cake and it was wonderful! I was so excited that someone spent the time to do that for me. We played lots of games like pin the baby clothes on the clothes line while holding a baby and a telephone...that was interesting! In the other picture, the ladies gathered around me and prayed for me. That was so neat. On the left side is mostly people from the Spanish speaking church that we attend and they prayed for me in Spanish. I could not understand most of what they were saying, but it was such a blessing and their prayers seemed so heartfelt. One of the ladies that prayed for me is also pregnant. She went to the doctor because of some pain that she was having from gall stones that she had and they discovered that she is 3 months pregnant. Please pray for her that her pain would end and that the rest of her pregnancy would be pleasant. She cannot have surgery because it would cause trauma to the baby. She has a one year old already and was surprised to be pregnant because she was still breastfeeding and had her tubes tied! The shower actually ended with us praying for her as well and that was wonderful too.

No Power-No Hot Shower

A funny thing happened yesterday. To me. Shortly before we made our weekly shopping trip down the mountain, the power went out. This happens occasionally, and we go on about our lives here until it comes back on. Well, when we got back we had just enough time to put our food up and relax for a few minutes before we had to head back down the mountain to celebrate a friend's birthday. The power was still out but I wanted a shower...even if it was cold. So, I take my (quick) shower, freezing, muttering, and wondering if there was someway I could build a solar power generator. Caroline decides she will take a shower to to freshen up---the trip down the mountain is filled with toxic fumes and smog. I'm still drying off trying to rub the circulation back into my legs and fingers and as soon as she gets in, she says "Oh, the water isn't that cold. In fact, it's kind of warm. I promise, it's warm!" I thought she was kidding. She wasn't. From the time I got out of the shower to the time she got in (about a minute), the power came back on. In case you aren't aware, we don't have a hot water heater, but rather this contraption that IS the water heater. It's just a heating element (220v) that heats the water as it comes in contact. Around here it's affectionately called "the widow maker" cause you can get quite a shock from it if you touch it while the water is running. It won't kill you (don't ask- curiosity is one of my strong points), but it can indeed wake you up!---Mike

Day of Rest

Today I am spending the day in the apartment just like yesterday because Mike and I ate something bad on Tuesday night...we think it was some carrots, but who knows? This morning I had even more time for my quiet time. I am redoing the Bible study "A Woman's Heart, God's Dwelling Place: The Tabernacle." It is a Beth Moore study that I did about 5 years ago and got 3/4th of the way finished, but never finished. Those Bible studies take so long to do and I always felt rushed doing them. For me, they take longer to do because there is so much information in them that I can never finish in the time they allot. I have gotten so much out of doing it at my pace. This morning the study was talking about how God created the Earth in six days and then he rested. Since He created the day and the night and that is considered a day, then I believe it is literally six days and not thousands of years. He worked for six days and rested on the seventh day. Does God get so tired that He needs to rest??? I think He wanted to show us a model of what we should do.

Last December when I was working at FROG (Fully rely on God) ministry at South Side Baptist the kids had to do an activity in which they had to list their wants and needs. I decided to do this list and I even hung it on our refrigerator until we moved here. My main want was a baby, the others I can't remember now, but my needs I remember well. I needed the people that I was working with to be nice to me, I needed less stress in my life and I needed more free time for myself and to spend with the Lord. Well, I can truly say that the things that I needed and wanted most God has brought those to my life. God has blessed us with the gift of life with a baby boy to be born soon, God has blessed me with some wonderful, Christian adults to work with that are our friends and coworkers, He has blessed us with more time to spend with each other and with Him which has given us less stress. I had no idea when I made that list that God would provide those things for us. Life here is harder in many ways and it was certainly hard to leave our family and friends, but God has truly provided for all of our needs. After being home for Christmas and the busyness that was our Christmas vacation I realized that even though I missed my family and friends that God brought us here to do His work and to provide for our deepest needs and one of my deepest needs was to spend more time with the Lord.

When we have power we try to listen to the Calvary worship service on-line. This morning the music was wonderful and in between one of the songs the pastor talked about going outside at 4:30AM on Saturday morning and looking at the snow and how in our busy lives we don't always get to enjoy God's creation. It is so true. When I was in the states I didn't really get to have a "day of rest" and now that I have that I don't know that I can go back to that busy life. God calls us to do all kinds of things, but busyness is not one of them...there is no where in the Bible that talks about being as busy as you can, but He does talk about rest. I believe that God has called us here to witness to our students and both of us have specific things that the Lord wants us to do here, but I believe He brought us here to teach us to rely on Him and rest in Him. -Caroline

Here are a couple pictures of the Statue of Jesus Christ in El Picacho City Park overlooking Tegucigalpa- it is a big statue of Jesus overlooking the city similar to the one in Rio De Janeiro. We went there in the middle of September, but never put the pictures on the blog. In the picture of the mountain the statue is about 10:00 from the Coca-Cola sign.